7 Steps to Metadata Utopia

NOTE: this isn’t a post talking about if it’s worth sending CD’s, or sending links to yousendits or SoundClouds or FTPs or Rapidshares (which, might I add, is RUBBISH) or public Dropbox links (which I recommend) or just whacking MP3’s directly into emails etc.

No, no, no – this is a post about the actual MP3 file, what it should look like, what it should contain and how by taking heed of the advice thus contained within this post, you’ll make a lot of people like me very happy.

Recently I contacted a handful of artists and asked them to get some music over to me as I was submitting a new batch of tracks to our sync contacts around the world and their music fitted the bill that was required. What I received in return was a resounding mish mash of metadata; some that ‘did the job’ and others which made me consider a change in career.

If I can ask for a moment of empathy; imagine this conversation taking place for a second…

Me: “Hello music supervisor of a massive TV programme that is known worldwide and would result in both fantastic exposure and a lovely sync fee for any artists’ music you so choose to use on your show”

Them: “Hello.”

Me: “Check out this great new song called ‘TRACK 01’ by ‘UNKNOWN ARTIST’, it’s really good! Would you like to feature it in your show?”

Them: “Goodbye.”

Thank you for allowing me to paint that vivid picture with my words. I can only assume you now know what I’m getting on at.

Firstly let me apologise to all the artists out there who are already ‘quite good’ at making sure all their metadata is up to scratch. You, my friends, are good people – but before you get all smug with yourself I urge you to read on, as I can pretty much promise that you won’t be providing the ‘perfect’ MP3 file.

Allow me if you will, to invite you all to a utopia. Within this said musical Shangri-La your iTunes library would never have to look like this:

Naughty Metadata!

But instead, everything looks like this

Lovely Metadata!

I know. It’s beautiful isn’t it? I’ll allow you a few minutes to compose yourself before we continue.

Shall we begin?

1) Start with the Right Software

If you use anything other than iTunes than go find the nearest calendar, realise it is 2010, and stop using whatever else it is you’re currently employing (I discovered someone still using Winamp the other day. I ASK YOU?!). The vast majority of the people you’ll be sending your MP3’s to will be using iTunes and *potentially* a Mac, but the latter doesn’t matter as it’s Apples media player which reigns victorious in this post.

2) Get your import settings right

On a PC: Under ‘Edit’ click ‘Preferences’ and then ‘Import Settings’.
On a Mac: Under ‘iTunes; click ‘Preferences’ and then ‘Import Settings’.

Once into that sub menu, set the ‘Import Using’ dropdown menu as ‘MP3 Encoder’. Then on ‘Setting’ below select ‘Custom’ and a further menu should pop up where on that you need to make sure it’s set to 320kbps on the dropdown menu as such:

Import Settings

At 320kbps your average 3:30 song will be around 8MB in size. Note that this isn’t email friendly. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post; this isn’t about HOW you’re getting the MP3’s to whomever, but about what they would like from you once they’ve received them. If I’m requesting your music in a digital format it is because I no doubt want to ‘do something’ with it (in this case; try and get it used on TV where it has to be at a certain quality to be considered). It is a myth that TV people and Advertisers will only work with WAV files – those days are gone and a high quality MP3 more often than not is suitable, at least in my experience. If you want an email friendly sized MP3 with perfect metadata then do all this, but just change the size to 128kbps. Simple.

3) Make sure your initial import is from a master file

I’m going to assume that you’ve probably already got your music as MP3’s somewhere on your computer. If so check what kbps rate they currently are (right clicking in iTunes and selecting ‘Get Info’), if it is anything less than 320kbps then you need to track down either i) the master file which is the WAV that was created from the ‘bouncing’ of the finished studio recording or ii) the master CD of your music. Once you’ve got your hands on that, import at a higher quality and you can replicate your MP3’s again and again and again and again without losing any sound quality. If you initially created your MP3’s at a low bitrate then they’ve forever destined to sound pants.

In fact, the best thing to do (which contradicts myself slightly from point 2) is to initially import your music as WAV’s so you have them on your computer and readily available. From the WAV files you can then create whatever MP3 you’ll ever really need.

4) Artwork

Create your lovely artwork so its dimensions are 600×600 pixels. That’s all I ask of you. Right click the track(s), select ‘Get Info’ and then ‘Artwork’. Lovely.

Artwork

5) Comments

The comments section is used quite commonly within our part of the industry and shouldn’t be overlooked. This is the best place to insert all your contact details and relevant web addresses so whoever is listening to your music can go and find out more if they so wished to.

Comments and Writer Info

6) Writer info

In here include the names of the writers and composers of the tracks so if people wanted to find the song on the PRS/MCPS database then they could do with ease (and as you’ll no doubt be registered to Sentric Music then your music will be registered on those databases). If you also wanted to include your star sign, likes and dislikes and whether or not you have a GSOH then so be it.

7) File name

So voila! You think you’re done yes? Well not quite. Your track may be sitting pretty in your iTunes library now but the file name might be looking quite miserable when sat on someone’s desk top like so:

Ugly Files

So once you’ve done all of the above steps, simply select all of your tracks at once and select ‘Create MP3 Version’:

The Makeover

And your new shiny files will look gorgeous before they’ve even been put into iTunes:

Pretty Files

So there you go. I hope you take something from this and I hope it is easy enough to follow if you’re not too clued up about these things. If you’re not then take the time out to learn to be; it’ll not take you too long to grasp it all and once you have it’ll genuinely help your cause.

What I’m listening to this week: the new Arcade Fire album, a cheeky little ‘Song’s we’re enjoying at the moment’ playlist (see below) and a mixtape from our chums at everybody’s stalking recordings (see below)

What I’m reading this week: House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski – amazing book, I do recommend you check that out.

Actually, invest in Media Rage. iTunes is a bloated bit of software and doesn’t give the absolute control and detail of Media Rage. I used to bang my head against the wall trying to get iTunes to not crap on my efforts, but now I am in meta-data heaven.

What seems so simple and obvious does seem to get overlooked. Often I am given music with no information embedded in it. Leaving me wondering who and what it is months and sometimes weeks later. Make it very easy for me to hit the delete key before I even hit ply

I’m glad I’m not the only one that gets annoyed about this. Spend most of my time doing what the artists should have done before forwarding me tracks…. And then there are those who don’t understand why I can’t play the .cda files that they’ve sent….

Thanks for writing on this! I am wondering if the artwork is embedded in the mp3 as part of the metadata or if it is just referenced to appear in your own iTunes (i.e. will you also see my artwork if I do this and send it to you?)

And hopefully there will be a format beyond mp3 that makes it even easier to lock all the interesting stuff onto a music file. MusicDNA was laumched earlier this year – but I’m struggling to find out whether it is going to make it off the ground!

I’m surprised there isn’t more buzz about musicDNA, unless of course it is a flawed concept and won’t work in practice! I picked up on Twitter the idea of a music file carrying with it everything we’d like to know about the world that surrounds the music and the artist and wrote about it on my blog. My guess is that none of the existing formats will satisfy our craving for metadata and music will be delivered through apps on the iPhone et al rather than cd and mp3 players.

Quote : “If you use anything other than iTunes than go find the nearest calendar, realise it is 2010”
No apparently it is you who should be up to date, because nothing beats MP3tag when it comes to Meta-data (and yes it has Itunes specific tags ) .
Of course you could argue that it is a Windows-only program but :
• Nothing comparable is available for Mac users (The so-called people “who get it” )
• It is bloody freeware no strings attached !
• it supports other formats such as ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags.

Seems Media Rage is shareware, costs $29.95 and the upgrade fee is $9.95 . There is less supported files format it seems too !
MP3tag being freeware, but yes seems like Media rage is a better solution for Mac users than Itunes (really don’t like this software ).
It must also be noted that most DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation ) have meta-data writing abilities and for encoding purpose LAME .mp3 Encoder is the bomb 😉 (freeware too )

That’s good for others to know. All i can tell you is Media Rage was recommended, worked, and given it’s something i need to do relatively regularly, i was happy to pay for it. But freeware options for others are good for them to know.

Steve Jobs has his head firmly rooted up his iArse these days. Apple as a decent innovative force is dead, all that’s let is toys for rich kids who don’t mind spending hundreds of pounds to beta-test flawed coding. Which is a shame given as I use apple for my work, but there you go, Apple are now worth more than Microsoft… woohoo.

Cheers, that’s a massive help. I’m having massive issues with Itunes 10 (compatability with Vista)resulting in a jammed iphone, but once I get that sorted I’ll sort out my MP3’s. Cheers, Chris (DAMASCUS)

[…] of which I believed to be my wittiest tweets have also gone un-RT’d. Whereas the post I did about Metadata, which when I wrote I believed to be a bit too niche (and pretty much only did it to solve a […]

[…] Learning how to create proper metadata for your MP3’s takes an hour to learn and potentially a few tries to master, but once you’ve done it you’ve gained a skill that will make you incredibly likable to people within the industry. Go here to learn more. […]

I’m not saying iTunes is the best; I’m saying what the majority of the people within the music industry who could help an artist with their career use. Which is iTunes. If I said Foobar 2000 to the guys at Channel 4 they’d think I was having a minor stroke.

[…] NOTE: this isn’t a post talking about if it’s worth sending CD’s, or sending links to yousendits or SoundClouds or FTPs or Rapidshares (which, might I add, is RUBBISH) or public Dropbox links (which I recommend) or just whacking MP3’s directly into emails etc. No, no, no – this is a post about the actual MP3 file, what it should look like, what it should contain and how by taking heed of the advice thus contained within this post, you’ll make a l … Read More […]

[…] AIFF – Audio Interchange File Format Basically Apple’s version of a WAV file (cue sound of sound technology geeks spitting out their coffee after reading that description). When your lovely music has been recorded then it’ll either be in AIFF or WAV; a massive filesize but crammed full of audio quality goodness before you compress the crap out of it into an MP3 so it’s easier to send/store. As I said above; a high quality MP3 will suffice in the vast majority of situations within the music industry; so rip everything at 320KBPS (kilobites per second) and you’ll be fine. Don’t know how to change a WAV/AIFF into a high quality MP3? Then read my handy ‘7 Steps To Metadata Eutopia’ guide. […]

I read a bit of what you wrote, probably good advise to an up and coming POP STAR. But a waste of time to me, as I am a song writer.
If I could do all the things you say that I should do. I wouldn’t need Scentric Music. I write songs and expect Sentric MUSIC TO DO THE REST .

Expecting everyone else to do the leg work for you is a very negative way of looking at your career and I utterly assure you that you’re really limiting your chances of success. Here at Sentric we’ll do what we do best for you, but if you can’t be bothered to learn about something as elementary as metadata then you’re doing yourself no favours at all good man.

having used itunes and media monkey to both tag my files of my own music, i still cannot get itunes to burn a CD and use the tags i have added, have just followed your suggestions with mp3 and wav files (converting them to mp3) and although i see the tags on my computer and if transferred to a USB or my iphone, when i burn a CD it still says ‘track…..’ is it because i am burning them onto CD and no way round this?

[…] NOTE: this isn’t a post talking about if it’s worth sending CD’s, or sending links to yousendits or SoundClouds or FTPs or Rapidshares (which, might I add, is RUBBISH) or public Dropbox links (which I recommend) or just whacking MP3’s directly into emails etc. No, no, no – this is a post about the actual MP3 file, what it should look like, what it should contain and how by taking heed of the advice thus contained within this post, you’ll make a l … Read More […]

hi there, i wasn’t asking if it was worth sending CD’s, i was asking when you have a MP3 file that you you work with as you suggest, why is it that when you burn on CD does the MP3 file info dissapear, is there another page/ bit of info you can point me too, if not no matter, i will keep trying to work it out, thanks, Dax

a other great read, i used to work anr for icm and the amount of track 01 files i got was insane.
it could be the best track in the world but when you can find it what the point.
If your going to spend days written a track take the 10 secs to do the mp3 conversion and tagging

[…] Posts Just WTF Is Music Publishing? The top 7 things independent artists do wrong (2011 edition) 7 steps to metadata eutopia How to use Dropbox & SoundCloud to send music to industry The ten essential Sentric posts you […]

Followed your i-t instructions..All meta date completed … the only fail is Part4 adding the artwork. When I ‘right click on file’ bit. Never used i-T before, but when I do this ‘get info’ there is no ‘Artwork’ add cover operation, just an empty white ‘No Artwork Available’ box in ‘Summary’. Now, I might be dim being a new user but I have been around the block and I just cannot find a way to add the artwork. – Excellent help blog, much help indeed thank you so much. John

[…] Hosted this week by Stuart Morrison of Insomnia Radio with music from Meg Hutchinson, The Vickers, Desperate Journalist, Cyber Snake, Shayna Zaid and The Catch, Honningbarna, Josh Woodward and Musician 404 […]

I put ID3 tags on my files when bouncing out of Logic Pro…those same fields don’t all show up in iTunes. Comments does, and Composer does, but there are fields for URL, Copyright info, publisher contacts, etc. Once those are in the file, how can people red those things? Or should I just be mashing all that info into the “comments” section so it can be seen in iTunes?

[…] So you sent your CD to a placement company for consideration in their library. Make sure each and every track has clear metadata with genre, title, artist, year, and CONTACT INFORMATION. That way, they don’t have to wade through hundreds of “track 10″s on their computer to find you after they ripped your CD. If you submit digitally, it’s even more important. It’s easy to do, there’s a guide here: Seven Steps to Metadata Utopia […]